10 Creepy Urban Legends That Will Scare You to Death

Urban legends have been around for hundreds of years. Some of them are based on true stories while others are just pure fantasy. In either case, it’s safe to say that these legends are a nightmare material and are not for the faint of heart. Here are the top ten creepy urban legends that will scare you to death.

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The Black-Eyed Children

The black-eyed children urban legend has become popular with the invention of the internet. There seem to be different variations about who they are and what they want, but the only constant in this legend is their dead black eyes that can send shivers down your spine. Among the beliefs of the origin of the black-eyed children are that they’re children of the devil or aliens that are trying to call home. They will knock on your door in the dead of night, explaining that they need to come inside your home to call their parents. Once you invite them in and look into their eyes, it’s over.

One of the first people that have come in contact with the black-eyed children is Brian Bethal in Texas in 1996. He explains while he was parked in an empty parking lot, he heard a knock on the window. When he glanced at the window, he saw two boys aged between 10 and 14, smiling at him. He rolled down the window, and that’s when one of the boys asked him to let them inside his car so he can take them back to their house. Because their coal-black eyes creeped Bethal out, he froze into his place and didn’t permit them. The boys then yelled at him, insisting that they can’t come with him unless he permits them. Shocked and disturbed by the outburst, he reversed out of the parking lot quickly. When he looked back again, they were gone.

Another encounter with them happened with an elderly couple. The couple let them in since it was in the middle of the night. They noticed immediately that one of their cats got scared and hid under the couch. They asked to go to the restroom while the wife was making them hot cocoa. When the wife saw their eyes, she looked at her husband and noticed that his nose was bleeding. Before the children left with their ‘supposed’ parents, the lights went out. However, soon after, the lights came back on. Throughout the following week, 3 of their cats went missing while the fourth was found dead in a pool of its blood. The husband suffered from frequent nosebleeds and was diagnosed with skin cancer.[1][2]

The Goatman of Maryland

The Goatman of Maryland is a half-goat half-man mythical creature that terrorized and spread fear among the residents of Maryland. The Goatman is believed to be an experiment done by a scientist named Stephen Fletcher at the Beltsville Research Agricultural Center. He was mixing the DNA of a goat with the DNA of his assistant. The medical experiment failed, and the humanoid goat hybrid was born. The recent appearance of the Goatman was in 2015.[3]

Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary is a tale as old as time and perhaps one of the most known urban legends around the world. The legend goes something like this; if a young woman stands in a dark bathroom and look into the mirror while chanting Bloody Mary three times, her ghost would appear in the mirror, promising to come after her baby. The origin of this urban legend is a tragic one. The woman who’s known as Bloody Mary was Queen Mary I. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

During her childhood and teenage years, Mary was ashamed of being a woman because of the frustrations that her father expressed over having no male heir. She took the throne aged 37 and married Philip of Spain. Two months after the marriage she announced that she was having a baby and displayed symptoms of a healthy pregnancy. As the rumors of a false pregnancy started to spread, she was anticipating more and more the arrival of her child. The due date arrived, but the baby never did. They waited for months upon months, and her belly began to shrink. Her case is what they call now ‘Phantom Pregnancy.’ After a couple of years, she announced another pregnancy but did not deliver a baby. She died the next year, aged 42, of what we believe uterine or ovarian cancer.[4]

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

The vanishing hitchhiker urban legend is often associated with an accidental interaction with a ghost, and many different variations of the legend are told all over the world, each tale adapting with the country and its culture. The vanishing hitchhiker, who also is called The Lady in the White, makes her first appearance to a newlywed couple in the northern California coast. As the couple, Nathan and Heather were driving along the coast to get to their destination – which they were late to – they saw a young woman in a white dress with her thumb outstretched.

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Nathan refused to pick her up at first, but then agree after his wife convinced him. They picked her up, and she told them that her house is about 10 miles away. As Nathan started driving, the woman fell silent in the backseat. When they arrived at the intersection she had mentioned, Heather looked back to find that there was no one in the backseat. The woman had vanished. An elderly couple stepped outside the house where they were parked and informed them that the hitchhiker was their daughter who had passed away seven years prior. She died in a hit and run, and the culprit was never caught, which is why they believe that her soul won’t rest until they do.[5]

Zombie Road

The zombie road is a short road located in the state of Missouri and is considered to be one of the most haunted places there. Many people said to have encountered inhuman and demonic entities on this road. The zombie road is haunted by a large number of deaths that happened there. It is believed that the railroad workers that once worked there rise from their grave and roam around the road, thus the name ‘Zombie Road.’ Others say that there was a patient nicknamed zombie that escaped a mental facility now haunts the road. The road has also seen its fair share of suicides and murders.[6][7]

Walking Sam

Walking Sam is another urban legend associated with shadow figures. Walking Sam is a mysterious shadow entity that has been seen in the Oglala Lakota Native American reservation. The entity appears to be 7 feet in height with long arms and a tall, lean figure. However, he doesn’t have a nose or a mouth. When he lifts his long arms, the souls of the Lakota tribe members can be seen hanging from them. The shadow figure has been seen wandering around aimlessly, presumably searching for something.

In every case of its sighting, it is described as an evil and a menacing entity. A group of teenager encountered Walking Sam in 2009 and had said that he tried to convince them to kill themselves. In 2014, 103 suicide attempts in the reservation were officially reported, which many believe to be attributed to Walking Sam. Other victims that have encountered the entity have explained that they were compelled by him as if he had a way into getting into their brains to control them.[8][9]

La Llorona (The Wailing Woman)

La Llorona urban legend originates from Mexico and is one of the most popular urban legends out there. The legend says that a Mexican woman falls in love with a Spanish man and the couple have three children together. The two had to keep their relationship secret and under wraps. So when the Spanish man marries another wealthy woman, La Llorona loses her mind and kills her three children. She immediately regretted her actions and threw herself in the river where now her spirit has been seen wandering nearby. She is usually described as a banshee-type; wearing a white dress, appears near lakes and rivers and cries for her lost children.[10]

Humans Can Lick, Too

The urban legend, Humans Can Lick Too, is derived from a bible story. One of the popular version about this urban legend tells that there was once an old lady who lived with her little dog. She heard on the radio that there was a murderer that escaped from jail and was on the loose, and the radio advised everyone to lock their doors and close their windows at night. The old lady took all precautions in locking the doors and windows except for a little window to let some air in. The window was too small for a person to go through and she didn’t think much of it.

During her sleep, she would let her hand down for the dog to lick it, and her dog did, so she figured everything was alright. In the middle of the night, she heard the sound of a liquid dripping. The old lady let her hand down again for the dog to lick it before going downstairs to check the water taps. There was nothing out of the ordinary downstairs, so she went to bed again. The dripping never stopped. She thought that the sound was coming from the shower in the bathroom. She entered the bathroom and was met by the awful sight of her dead dog hanging in the shower with its intestines hanging out and dripping blood. She saw the words ‘Humans can lick, too’ written on the mirror and the reflection of the murderer behind her.[11]

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Wendigo

The tale of Wendigo, a man-eating evil spirit, goes back hundreds of years ago. The monster is said to be 15 feet tall and has a malnourished appearance. The bones are visible through its stretched skin, and it has large claws for hands. The tale takes place In Southern Canada during the winter when they suffered from the lack of food and starved to death. Due to the extreme conditions, it’s said that the Wendigo preys on humans who are weak from starvation. It posses them and urges them to eat human flesh. Once they do, they transform into the tall creature and the more it feeds, the larger its stomach would get which leaves the creature in a constant state of hunger.[12]

Le Loyon

Le Loyon is a tall, nearly 2 meters humanoid figure wearing a gas mask and a Gimp suit. It was seen haunting the woodlands near the Swiss town of Maules in 2003 by hikers and residents. Due to the frequency in which Le Loyon appeared, urban legends spread around the town theorizing that it was the ghost of a soldier or an alien. Other realistic theories say that Le Loyon was a hermit that might have suffered from deformities, hence why it wore concealing clothes. Even though the residents reported the figure to the police, it was utterly harmless and was never aggressive towards anyone. A woman last sighted him in November of 2013 picking flowers in the forest. Le Loyon left its clothes and a note near a tree. The letter, which many believe was a suicide note, said, “The risk of a hunt for the beast had become too big.”[13][14]